Page 192 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twenty

Andreas

A s the car rumbles along the first streets of denser-packed buildings, carrying us toward downtown Florence, I glance across the backseat to where Riva is sitting.

It’s strange seeing her wearing a dress, even this fairly casual knit one with a boat neck and a skirt that falls to just below her knees, the long sleeves hidden under a suede jacket for extra warmth.

The only other time I have is the fancy evening gown she picked out for the soap-opera-style party I arranged on Rollick’s yacht.

When I couldn’t help staring at my first sight of her by the car back at the villa, her lips quirked into an awkward smile. “Since this is supposed to be a date, I figured I should dress up a little.”

I can’t help thinking of all the possible lives she could be living, all the things she might have enjoyed doing in those lives, if the one she has hadn’t been so strictly regimented by our keepers.

Dressed up or not, she’s still Riva. Still warily alert, still poised as if braced for danger.

She’s gazing out the window, her eyes flicking back and forth as she takes in the first semi-local scenery we’ve had access to beyond the villa’s grounds. But her hand stays clamped around mine as if to make sure I don’t disappear.

I’m filled with joy at being with her outside the tighter constraints of the villa and the thrill of wondering what we might accomplish with our leashes loosened. Those happier emotions come with a twinge of guilt.

I clear my throat, unable to hold back the question. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have brought Dominic?”

Riva’s attention jerks to me. “What?”

I shrug awkwardly. “I mean—he just woke up. You’ve had a lot less time with him than the rest of us since all this started.”

She studies me for a moment before scooting a little closer on the seat. Her fingers shift to twine with mine instead of just wrapping around them.

“I thought about it,” she admits. “But I figured—you’re our history-keeper. Our storyteller. You’d be the best one to make the others feel like they got to have a bit of freedom too.”

The intensity in her eyes tells me she intends to communicate more than the words she’s saying. There’s something about my talent with memory that she thinks will be important during our temporary escape—something Balthazar wouldn’t be happy about.

I nod with a crooked smile. “That makes sense.”

What makes more sense than anything is that she’d be thinking up ways to spin this gift to our advantage, no matter how monitored we are.

I’m not totally sure what we can accomplish out here that would work in our favor while the other guys are still trapped back at the villa, but I’m open to ideas.

I also intend to help Riva enjoy this theoretical date in every way possible while we have the chance.

She’s seemed more grounded since Dominic came back to us, her vibe of constant agitation and frustration fading. But the signs of tension haven’t vanished. Her worries show in the set of her jaw, the flex of her fingers around mine.

How could she not still be upset about our situation?

I can’t free us permanently from Balthazar when we’re on our own, but I can at least remind her of how much we have to look forward to when we do break free. Of all the good things this world has to offer despite the evil we’ve encountered in it.

The excursion has already told us a bit more about what we’re dealing with. We know that Balthazar’s villa is in Italy—not a surprise given the look of it, but good to have confirmation—within a few hours of Florence.

Unfortunately, I don’t speak any Italian, but it’s got some overlap with Spanish. I could probably make myself understood on the basics if I needed to.

Not that going up to someone and trying to convey that we’re being held on a mountaintop by a madman is likely to go over well. Somehow I don’t think the Florence police department is equipped to tackle Balthazar, even if they believed us.

Even if we could get through the full story before he knocked us out.

As the car slows with the thickening traffic, I take in the buildings outside the window. I’d probably be more awed by the towering yellow and white-washed facades and intricately carved window frames if I hadn’t been surrounded by similar architecture for the past two weeks in our fancy jail.

But there is a weird relief to seeing so many normal people walking along the streets: locals striding briskly or ambling with casual confidence, tourists peering at their phones or folded maps.

The storefronts and restaurants we pass remind me of the thin wad of cash Toni handed me for this outing.

Fifty euros isn’t going to get us far, but it should allow a decent sort-of date.

Our driver parks at the edge of a broad, stone-tiled plaza surrounded by Medieval-looking buildings built out of warmer shades of stone. With a grunt, he motions for us to get out.

Riva and I exchange a glance and slide out on the same side of the car. I assume Balthazar has at least a couple other vehicles staked out nearby, his employees monitoring our movements to ensure we don’t make a run for it and scanning our conversations for shows of rebellion.

Still, being able to walk away from the car with just Riva by my side lifts a weight I hadn’t even realized was pressing down on my chest.

Riva cranes her neck toward the street we drove up. “I think I saw a tourist information office. We should grab a map if we’re going to make the most of the time we have here.”

I let out a dry chuckle. “And to make sure we can get back here when it’s pickup time.”

Balthazar said he’d give us “a few hours” and that our bracelets would signal us when it was time to return. I suspect he likes keeping us on our toes, not knowing exactly when the call will come.

We set off down the street at a quick pace. Riva points out a sign declaring Informazioni Turistiche with a lower case i next to it that I recognize as the universal info symbol.

Inside, Riva grabs one of the free maps on offer… and uses her supernatural speed to pilfer one of the pens off the counter when the staff person isn’t watching.

“Do you know where you want to go?” I ask as we step back onto the street. The breeze is a bit nippy, but the bright mid-day sun warms the air in its wake.

Riva inspects the map, and a sudden gloom comes over her expression. “I’m not sure.”

I hate seeing her spirits sink before my eyes. If she hasn’t figured out the best course of action yet either, we might as well get something good out of our time here rather than just stewing on it.

I tuck my hand around her elbow. “Let’s start with something simple, then. I’m ready to get something to eat.”

Riva nods hesitantly. “I want to take a look around first… Maybe we can just stroll and get an idea of what’s in the neighborhood.”

Is she looking for something specific? If so, she obviously isn’t comfortable saying it out loud.

It could be she’s simply hoping for inspiration to strike.

I give her arm a reassuring squeeze. “Sure. Let’s admire the scenery.”

Riva’s grateful smile in return transforms my false cheer into a little more genuine upbeat mood.

We wander along several streets and through a couple of plazas, pausing a couple of times to gaze up at the particularly spectacular buildings. I can’t tell what has changed for Riva when she declares, seemingly at random, “All right, let’s get some lunch.”

I pick out a café that gives me a friendly vibe and do the ordering, since I can make more sense of the menu. Riva rewards me with a grin when a tall glass of lemonade arrives for her.

I have to beam back at her. “I’m sure it’s not as sour as your custom creation, but it’s been a while since you’ve gotten to have any.”

The anguish of our captivity might be an unspoken presence in the back of both our minds, but I have to take a simple pleasure out of her wordless murmur of pleasure as she digs into the pasta I picked out for her—a spaghetti carbonara with the bacon sprinkled liberally.

It’s some kind of miracle that I now know this woman well enough to offer her a simple pleasure so easily.

She eats quickly, so I gulp down my penne in marinara sauce to keep pace. But after checking with me about how much cash I still have, she orders another lemonade to go.

There’s an air of anticipation around her as we meander back down the street—the way we came, by Riva’s choice. She sips at her lemonade, but her small smile fades into a pensive expression.

Something in her face sets with visible resolve. She grabs my hand and tugs me over to a bench.

The chatter of voices in a language neither of us knows winds around us, but we’re both aware that’s not enough to cover a conversation between us. Riva pulls out the map and pen and writes something on the back.

“There are a few things I’d like to take a look at,” she says, and slides the map so I can read what she wrote. Your memories of Rollick. Any time he talked about helping us. I don’t know whether we should have trusted him.

I’m not totally sure why she’s asking, but I turn toward her without hesitation. “Of course. I don’t mind letting you call the shots.”

Whoever’s listening in can assume we’re only talking about landmarks to gawk at.

I raise my hand to Riva’s cheek as if this is a romantic moment, but from the back of my head, I draw up my recollections of the shadowkind demon who took us under his protection. Fixing my eyes on hers, I let the images flow from my mind to hers.

Some of the moments Riva was there for too: when we first confronted Rollick in his Miami hotel, when he organized his shadowkind underlings to help us practice our powers, when he agreed to give us the resources we needed to rescue some of the younger shadowbloods from an isolated facility.

Others she’ll never have seen from any perspective.

There was the time when I asked him for permission and the opportunity to make amends with Riva by way of that party, which the demon agreed to without argument.

A conversation while she hid away after she’d accidentally hurt one of our shadowkind friends, when Rollick assured me he wasn’t going to retaliate.

I believed in him. I can’t say with certainty what happened after we got the kids free from the facility that turned out to be a trap for us, but no part of me can imagine that Rollick purposefully had the younger shadowbloods slaughtered.

If they’re dead at shadowkind hands, it was in spite of him, not because of him.

My feelings won’t come across in the memories, but maybe that’s beside the point. Riva wants an objective perspective to add to her own recollections.

And I can do that. I can show her a broader view of reality.

As I jump from one memory to another, a different sort of satisfaction wells up inside me.

Riva called me the shadowbloods’ history-keeper and storyteller, but those things mean more than just entertaining people. I can show the truth with the glimpses of the past I hold in my head—truths that might be lost to us otherwise.

I’ve done it before: when I showed Riva how the guardians had deceived us about her role in Griffin’s supposed death, when I offered her my perspective of my argument with Jacob after she and I first had sex. I just never thought about it quite that way until now.

Reliving the memories while I project them to Riva’s mind only solidifies my own sense of what’s true. Rollick wasn’t human, and his sense of morality might have been somewhat skewed by that… but not much more so than our own morals are as shadowbloods.

When it mattered, he was there for us. I never saw him show unnecessary cruelty.

When I ease back from the psychic connection, Riva blinks a few times and rubs her forehead. She shoots me a twisted smile that looks more uncomfortable than happy.

“I just want to make sure… that we don’t get lost,” she says quietly. “Heading in the wrong direction. But I guess pretty much everything we could do is right, comparatively speaking.”

More right than what we’re experiencing back at the villa? I chuckle softly. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

I pause, recognizing the tenor of Riva’s uncertainty even if I don’t totally understand what she’s working through. She’s deciding between believing our impressions of Rollick… and what the guardians showed us?

There’s a little more I can say—or rather show—on that subject.

I stroke my fingers over her temple. “Something else to consider.”

In a fleeting stream, I bring up the memories of the various ways the guardians have betrayed us. Misled us. Manipulated us. Just a glimpse of one and another, enough to stir the unpleasant memories Riva already has without forcing her to dwell in them longer than she needs to.

Wetting my lips, I catch her gaze again in the present. “We know going in that direction definitely wasn’t right for us lots of times.”

We have no direct proof that Rollick ever lied to us. But the guardians did all the time.

Riva’s fingers curl around the map. Then she dips her chin in a sharp nod.

“All right. I know where we should start. We never got dessert.”

She tugs me farther down the street, around a couple of corners… and toward a pastry shop she must have noticed during our earlier wanderings.

A pastry shop with a small sign announcing an internet café up top.